Jesus Jargon: Orthodoxy

Hello friends, welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
We are continuing on today in our series
Jesus Jargon and we’re throwing a big one at you.
I’m not sure that everyone is going to have heard
this word.
We’re going to be discussing orthodoxy today and orthodoxy is actually a very historic,
very sort of shaping word throughout the course of the life of the church and it has done that
in ways that may be surprising to you.
So we’re glad to have you join us for the conversations.
We sort of tease out the strands of what we mean when we think about orthodoxy in the church and
to start that conversation,
orthodoxy means right belief.
It’s the idea that as Christians we seek
to both learn and discern what is true and that we live our lives in such a way because of that
that is wise and that reflects the the goodness and grace of Christ.
Now the way that that has
been lived out institutionally has been that the church has been very interested in finding right belief.
Theologians have written entire volumes on each and every sort of particular topic of the
faith seeking to find what is the right faith as it relates to this particular belief and you know
it’s not going to surprise you when we live in a world with lots of Protestant denominations,
when you have the Catholic Church,
the Roman Church, the Western Catholic Church and then
the Eastern Church.
We have lots of different sort of takes on orthodoxy but the idea of right belief
is held universally across the church.
Yeah I think if people are familiar with this word it may be
in terms of the Orthodox Church or maybe Orthodox Jews and the word is actually
predates denominations or segments.
It has to do with the the right thing so
ortho means straight, doxuses, righteousness or in some sense belief.
So what are right beliefs and
obviously the church has argued about that during its entire history and those groups that have
claimed for themselves the title Orthodoxy have rather confidently declared that they are unlikely
to move from their position.
Historically though Orthodoxy is a kind of theological argument.
I don’t know that a person would encounter it too often in day-to-day church life.
It’s probably not a word that you’re going to hear very often on Sunday.
It’s a kind of background word but the
idea of right belief is strongly present in the church and I would say that the idea of what do
we believe and what is the correct way to think about issues of faith, what are the
correct doctrines, what are the proper ways to understand the gospel.
I think that’s something
people can resonate with and they may not know that those are Orthodoxy conversations but they’ve
probably been engaged in them.
Yeah I think it’s a really helpful frame to bring early in this
conversation because there’s a sense in which I think the word and idea of Orthodoxy is elusive
to just the person living out their faith day-to-day and what I mean by that is most of the time we’re
not giving a whole lot of thought to the theological framework or understanding of the
trinity per se or though we try to read the scripture and to hear God’s word for us and
most of us aren’t thinking how that scripture should be understood to be God’s word.
What’s the theological root from which we understand how God speaks in scripture.
There’s a sense in which
the church has tried from the very beginning to really hold this beautiful gem of theological
truth.
There’s this sort of idea that the church was the sort of chief jewel of the sciences for
thousands of years, hundreds and hundreds of years and the maintenance of the theological
understanding of what is metaphysically or not physically true has been core to the church’s
identity and so sorry that’s a long way to get back to the point of saying most of us are trying
to really live our life as best as we possibly can in light of what we know is true about Christianity
and so most of the time that leads us into more ethical sort of places you know when my co-worker
is gossiping behind my back what’s the right approach to that.
That’s where we generally
look for the wisdom of the faith instead of looking for well what’s the exact right word to
describe this relationship in the trinity as opposed to this one.
The church has spent a lot of time
giving thought to what the right way to understand God’s revelation in the world is and
though you’re not going to find any universal agreement as to exactly how that lays out for
every Christian I do think it’s an important task because whether we are conscious of it or not
we build our practical lives on top of these conversations.
What we understand the truth
of the incarnation of Jesus Christ to be may not be a thing you talk about your dinner table
but ultimately over a lifespan of teaching and faith and service it will shape our imaginations
of who we are and what it demands of us in the world.
So these are important things but I guess
if you let me make the distinction I’d call them second order things.
They’re things that we may
not think consciously all the time but they lie underneath the surface and we build lives on top of them.
I think that it’s important at this early stage and one of the tricky parts of a word like
orthodoxy is that while we are talking about doctrines and ideas which are widespread
we’re not necessarily talking about consensus.
In other words orthodoxy is not achieved by simply
what the most people believe.
The idea is orthodoxy is the idea that best expresses the truth of
scripture the truth of Christianity and for many of you that means that you have seen
beliefs.
If you’ve been a Christian for longer than say a couple of decades you’ve seen some
changes in the faith.
There was a time in which pastors would never have been divorced that’s
changed.
There’s been a time in which women would not have practiced leadership that has changed.
There are these moments where we what we have done in the past changes and we do something
differently into the future.
Now that may be a revision of what we consider orthodox
but we tend to talk about orthodox as those core essential beliefs that aren’t related to the
practices that kind of change and so yes you could say that Christianity has in many of our
lifetimes gone through some changes but by and large from a historical perspective it would be
fair to say what has been considered orthodox is largely unchanged.
Some of those we don’t use the
word fundamentals in the Presbyterian Church because of some of our history with fundamental
lists but you could say some of those core doctrines those we would almost come very close
to calling them unchanging beliefs.
Those things that are simply inherently part of Christianity
it’s not to say that they don’t get challenged because that’s how it works.
Orthodoxy is always being challenged and the test is will it stand up to those challenges and as it does and as it has
through the centuries that develops what we think of as our standards or our orthodox tradition.
Yes so it’s not going to surprise you that a place a really practical place where orthodoxy
is really named are the creeds things like the Nicene Creed the Apostles Creed these very ancient
creeds we turn to not just as Presbyterians but as Methodists and Episcopals and even the Catholic
Church we’ll look to these creeds as things that for us form up the foundational element of what
it means to be Christian.
If you’re going to be a person who lives in the way of Christ
these documents give us a road map that show us well there are some essentials about who Jesus
was and what he did that we can’t let go of.
If we as Christians let go of the idea of death, resurrection,
ascension which are key not only in the biblical scriptures but are key in the
early churches of reflections and confessions if we let go of those things then we’re beginning
to walk beyond the bounds of what the church has traditionally understood its life to be.
What is interesting about that however is some people think of orthodoxy as a fence that that
it keeps you in and anyone outside the fence is by definition wrong or that they’re not welcome
that and the church has wrestled with this I think your analogy is far help more helpful
Clint the idea that that these things stand on their own the central Christian belief is that
any theology that we believe is only as valid as the God that it describes in other words it’s
always human it’s always fallible we’re seeking to describe things that are by definition
beyond human control and so in that whenever we’re right we’re only right because we’re
describing God who is true and whenever we’re wrong it’s simply because we fell short of that
goal and so the goal of orthodoxy is not to kingdom build over others or to lure that over
others it’s rather to be true in our reflection and therefore right in our living this idea that
if we are describing God as best as we can for who God is then our lives will naturally reflect
the goodness and grace and love of that God the gospel is the word that we use to describe that so
we as Presbyterians are not particularly afraid to question and to wrestle with and to engage
in conversation with I wouldn’t say with orthodoxy per se but certainly the constellation of things
surrounding it because of our belief that God can stand on God’s own merit that that God is by
definition true and right and above and and good and therefore our human questions our human
wrestling is not going to bring down who God actually is I think one of the struggles with a
concept like orthodoxy in a denomination like ours is unlike say the Catholic Church
which has a very tight hierarchy from top down so you have a pope and cardinals and they get to
declare here are the parameters so here is a firm line from the top down of where orthodoxy stops
and how far it extends and here it is and we know that if we don’t agree with it we have stepped
past it in a denomination like mainline church and specifically in this case the Presbyterian
Church those lines are fuzzy we don’t have that person we don’t have that structure that says
here are the boundaries of orthodoxy so we have to find them in our use we have to find them
in our conversations with one another we have to find them by continually going back to
our historic scholarship and going back to our understanding of scripture and there it is a much
messier way to try to discover where the parameters of right belief are because
they are easier to challenge and there are a wider variety of things that must be appealed to
to answer the question and that makes it i think an interesting process and maybe one of the
reasons that by and large Presbyterians don’t use a word like orthodoxy a lot we would talk about
reformed essentials we would talk about the tenets of the reformed faith we would talk about historic
doctrines but orthodoxy is is a struggle for us i think not only in terms of our language but
certainly in terms of our governmental structure and the way in which we engage ideas within our
denomination i think that’s 100% true and i think it even goes another level beyond that because
the reformed tradition Presbyterians have historically been committed to this idea that
the church both needs to engage with the sacred texts but we also need to engage with the secular
culture in which we live as reformed people we believe that we find truth in the grace love
and sovereignty of our lord jesus christ but that has implications for the world in which we live
the culture the society even the political powers that we live in the reformed people have sought
to live with these two things which are difficult to hold intention if we’re going to be obvious and
the reason why that is particularly important in this conversation as we think about right belief
is that what we engage in our culture often it makes it even more difficult to hold on to the
tension as culture has its own give and take with political conservative and liberal with
cultural conservative and liberal with social expectations with the sort of the ideas as
humanity continues the church therefore stands with these conversations happening outside its
walls seeking to hold on to the truth that we maintain that we believe as you said in the
beginning this conversation is unchanging and so because it’s true and so as we seek to engage
with people who are having conversations about constantly shifting social mores and we’re seeking
to hold on to things that we believe are beyond our own experience true they’re they’re eternal
in some senses that there is this even more messy complicated thing that happens as presbyterians
from iowa and california and africa and chile right as as all of us seek to speak together to
to discern what is true to hold on to this this right belief we find that intention with a world
that is constantly changing and shifting and and we try to bring these conversations together
because we believe that god speaks through all of that ultimately and i think there’s attention on
the other end because inside the church has been this tendency to think of orthodoxy as kind of uh
the box that we put the things we absolutely know are true in and then we lock it up so that they
can never be challenged well as a as a product of the reformed church presbyterians as products
of the reformation i should say that that was exactly the thing that we were challenging
in the midst of that split that the catholic church said these things cannot be questioned
and the reformer said no these things must be questioned and so presbyterians i think by our
history have been a little reluctant to hold up even some of the things that we would definitely
profess as the core of the faith and say these are unquestionable we will never investigate them we
were we will never challenge them that’s not historically how we have lived as christians
we have moved forward by asking difficult questions by wrestling with scripture by wrestling
with culture and so a thing like orthodoxy can make us a little nervous if it means i know i’m
right i know i can’t be questioned and this is the box that i put those right ideas in and no one else
can ever look at them that that’s that’s a dangerous way from our perspective to practice
the faith so we have been willing on the other end maybe our weakness is we have been willing
to ask questions of any of our doctrines i would argue even to our detriment at times
there are times when we have conversations that are uncomfortable and and maybe even take us to
the boundaries of what we can reasonably call christian or not and as people who have been
through seminary michael and i both sat in those rooms and heard those conversations
and they’re not comfortable though they’re not they’re also not unimportant this is how for us
this is how orthodoxy is is found and navigated we we find our right belief ultimately by the
beliefs that we know we can’t live without the ones that seem to us essential to represent
and honor and communicate what it is that we find of jesus christ in the scripture
and in our history yeah it’s important that you know the fundamentals because once you know some
of the fundamentals you can trace how those themes weave their way into other aspects of the faith
and a really practical example of that is as reformed people we have given a lot of thought
and we’re very convicted that human human sinfulness plays a massive role in our understanding
of the world ourselves and who god is and we talk about this thing called human depravity what we
what we’re speaking of simply is that the human state the human soul is so sin sick that we cannot
accurately identify all of the places that are impacted by that sin that that sin has had its
run through us and that it that we are by our own vantage and lens as we look at the world we
can’t even see all of the places that sin has tainted it if you start from that place or if
you recognize that as a fundamental of the human condition because of what we believe has been
revealed in scripture and what we see jesus christ our lord and savior calling us out from
in the gospels if that if you take that from that starving position then what will naturally follow
is the reality that when we talk about things like orthodoxy for foreign people are very
uncomfortable saying that we can ever a hundred percent accurately identify what is the true thing
separate from our own human brokenness in other words we we are almost constitutionally demanded
that we must say from the best that i can see this is essential fundamental it is right yet
i may be in my own human sinfulness by my own human fallenness unable to see a thing that others
may see or that we may all have not seen yet right there’s a kind of fundamental humility that comes
from that idea of human brokenness and i’m not trying to get into human sinfulness per se i just
want to make that case that this has a really foundational impact in how we understand our
lives and when you consider the fundamental and then you see how that weaves its way through
the rest of the faith that’s what makes the conversation of orthodoxy so important even
though we may not use the word and worship we may not talk about it in every bible study
if you don’t start with a shared understanding of these are the things that the ground that needs
tilled these are the places that deserve our attention this is the thing that we believe
deserves the attention of questioning and conversation if we don’t start in the same
place there there’s no possible way that we can see these threads come together
as we seek to be communities of faith together and the upside in that is that for the most part
it’s kept us as Presbyterians fairly humble about the things we claim to absolutely know
that’s a smaller category than it would be in other traditions that more confidently feel that
they have arrived at unassailable truth the downside for Presbyterians is that it has opened
the door to essentially question everything you know i remember a conversation i had with a friend
in seminary who said i i don’t believe in the trinity i don’t accept the trinity and realistically
what orthodox looks like for Presbyterians is you have the freedom and the right to make that
statement of course but you do so as one who is leaving the stream of traditional Christianity
you can no longer call yourself christian now i’m not saying that person doesn’t believe in
jesus christ what i’m saying is that historically the label christian encompasses a number of
fundamental beliefs one of them being that god is a trinitarian god that the trinity is the way
that we understand who god is even perhaps the actual way god is as revealed to us and so when i
say i just don’t believe that i have the freedom to do that but i’m stepping beyond the boundary
at that point that that would be one i think that historically we would see as a clear departure
from what we would all essentially call orthodoxy that that’s not a judgment upon that person’s
spirituality it is to say there is a collection of things that represent us and and that’s not one
of them and so while you are welcome in these conversations understand that you stand apart
from what the rest of us believe and you you don’t in our struggle with orthodoxy
the alternative should not be that everyone gets to believe whatever they want that that’s not a
better option yeah though a hundred percent and you know for all of the weaknesses that i think
presbyterians are almost compelled to release that’s sort of like a cultural reality of our
family the faith that we we just always want to hedge a little bit and say hey this is a thing
that we believe is really important but and then we you know fill that in a little bit i i think
there’s real wisdom in coming to the conversation to say that yes while we believe these things will
stand up that doesn’t mean that everything is equally worth our time and attention that not
every conversation is particularly helpful in this moment as we seek to be faithful people and
questioning the life of the trinity seems to be to though there may be merit in it and of course
we allow questions and struggling in our families of faith it that that’s probably not likely the
most important place for us to be directing our attention and time at this place now that brings
with it this other flip side which is you know people who throw around the word orthodoxy often
have been in my experience people who are applying theological ideas to very specific
situations so a lot of times that is social situations um you know i wouldn’t say this
happens a lot in the presbyterian church but you know should you vote for this person should you
have this political stance should you support this social idea sometimes people begin to narrow
the idea that the faith says something particular about this exact and specific thing and that
anyone who doesn’t agree with that is therefore outside the bounds of the faith you sometimes
hear this in those circumstances i think we’ve left the conversation that we’re talking about
when we talk about orthodoxy because what we’re talking about is is not really limited to a
particular social issue it’s not about uh should you vote this way on the ballot as much as it is
do you understand the world to have been made this way or do you understand god to to work in
this way or do you understand the core of the gospel to mean this surely all of those things
have implications for those things those really practical things but i’m very very cautious and
i would caution you if you’re in the midst of conversations with someone and they make it sound
like one of those third or fourth order things those are matters uh those are litmus tests of
the faith you know those are places where Presbyterians have been pretty consistent in
being willing to live with some diversity live with some mystery live with some wiggle room
so that Presbyterians can sit next to each other and vote very differently or or perceive of the
solution to problems very differently than their neighbor but yet we’re very convicted that if you
go to the core of the faith we’ll both be nourished fed and sent to do the work of the gospel even
if we may find ourselves living that out in different frameworks in the world i think one
of the benefits of a word like orthodoxy is that it’s a historic word and it is a kind of special
case word it it is largely in many instances a religious word and specifically it is a fairly
common christian word historically speaking and what that what that means is that it tends to
connect to historic doctrines to historic conversations and so when somebody says i don’t
think drums belong in church i i believe that drums shouldn’t be in church it’d be very very
hard to argue that that’s a matter of orthodoxy that that’s a a a right idea a a big t capital
truth when someone says well i think the resurrection is a metaphor and i don’t think
it was a physical reality well wait a minute now we have centuries of thought and history in the
christian faith that say you you can’t call yourself a christian in the sense we mean it
and simply say that so in one case i have a belief but it’s not an orthodox belief it’s really
an opinion i i like this music or that music in another case my opinion really puts me outside
the tradition of historic christianity and and that i think is when we can rightly use and and
probably should use a word like orthodoxy so in other words i hope that’s not confusing but i
think one of the benefits of a of a rather unknown word is that it is reserved for kind
of special cases when we’re talking not just about regular church stuff but historic doctrine
theology kind of stuff and i think that helps us if we use it well yeah very much i think it it can
be a source of unity and sort of vitalization for a congregation because it was what may seem
anti-intuitive is that when we turn to some of the oldest truths of the faith we discover fresh
energy to tackle the contemporary problems that surround us so often we see problems and we have
questions being asked in the coffee shops or the the the difficult differences of opinion we
experience at family tables with our extended family you know however we encounter the problems
of the world our temptation i think is to then turn to scripture for ready-made answer to those
challenges and though that can sometimes bear fruit you may be surprised how often returning
to those core ancient a deeply embedded truth of the gospel will be in transforming your imagination
about these contemporary things in other words when we return to the truth of the incarnation
the reality of the resurrection the promise of the trinity we find in these orthodox beliefs that
the historic church has a built beautiful understandings of how these describe the
truth of god’s presence and work in the world if we look to those things we often find amazingly
contemporary realities that move us forward and so i think ordering our lives in this order is
helpful i once had a teacher they weren’t talking about orthodoxy as we are today they were talking
about scripture but i think the analogy applies they said some people come to scripture seeking
to extract from it the wisdom that they need for that moment and they said this professor said
ultimately that reflects the human heart’s pride that that we can get out of scripture what we want
he said a more faithful response to scripture is to come to it and humbly submit to it trusting
that it will have something to say to our lives because it’s the holy scriptures that orientation
i think is essential as christians especially reformed protestant christians we’re not afraid
to ask questions even difficult questions but we do so standing under orthodoxy we humble ourselves
to the men and women of the faith who have come before us and said you need to take this seriously
we don’t take that lightly and nor should we we should be people that as we ask questions as we
engage with our world and also the truth of our faith we should recognize there are some things
that demand our respect and attention maybe maybe we find ourselves challenging it but if we don’t
find ourselves humbled in that challenge we’re not ordering ourselves rightly in those conversations
yeah and then there’s a second part of this conversation i think that becomes very important
orthodoxy is really but a place to start and unfortunately a lot of the assumption of
christians has been if i can get myself to write beliefs then i’m done i’ve done my job but there’s
a second chapter to this word there’s a related word that is vitally important and that’s
ortho praxis praxis is the word that means to to practice it’s the exact word from practice so
when we have right belief it must therefore lead to right practice what we do is a reflection
of what we think what we believe and so our belief guides our actions and so as we get
to a place where we call our faith orthodox then it should lead us to the right practice
of those beliefs in the world and in the church in other words if i get my beliefs lined up and
i say this is what orthodox means and i am an orthodox christian and then i judge everyone
who isn’t and i insult them and i criticize them and i don’t care about them then i have just
negated the very thing that i think i’ve claimed right belief compels right action they complement
one another they demand one another they must be kept in conversation and for a long time with a
tradition that values education and theology and is sort of proud of our deep thinking heritage
we have perhaps maybe one maybe some of our reluctance to talk about orthodoxy is that as
we look over our history we probably have to confess that we put an inordinate amount of
on right belief sometimes sacrificing enough attention on right practice yeah that is where
we find this schism this hypocrisy between what we believe and how that informs what we do and on on
one level that has been a historical reality of the church let’s not pat ourselves in the back we
haven’t created new problems in our modern time we’re certainly aware of the hypocrisies of the
point and as we come to this idea of ortho proxy it is an essential litmus test of the belief
if our belief does not lead us to the work of jesus christ it likely is not orthodox it is likely
not stemming from the truth of jesus christ and the best example of this i i think comes straight
from jesus’s life and teaching in the gospels it would be very difficult i think to read the
and to not see how jesus both his teaching and his life lived was a struggle for especially
the religious leaders for people who encountered jesus the stuff that he taught seemed to be
outside the fold of normal conversation it seemed to surprise people and then when he
showed up to dinner with people who a self-respecting jew would not eat dinner with
that too was shocking and these both matter jesus is understanding that the kingdom of
god has come that he was proclaiming that that god has come god has taken on human flesh and this
will change everything it includes the people that you by definition rule out when when jesus’s
revelation of who he was and therefore who god is when jesus taught that when he revealed that
when he showed that belief it therefore lived out in ways that was as revolutionary as the
revelation itself was and you know i think you’re right clinton as Presbyterians we can even point
to our sort of secular culture we’ve had some very notable Presbyterians who have been leaders in
corporations and even presidents of the country and you know just because a person has ascribed
to a belief does not mean that that belief has shaped the outcome of their action and that’s not
just a meta judgment i mean we all make actions that are not reflections of our faith right we
all have places where we need to learn and grow but fundamentally i think as we come to this idea
of orthopraxy we should judge ourselves with as much rigor and nuance when we’re considering how
we live as what we believe and Presbyterians have been very good at the belief we do need to
recognize the importance of the action because that life lived is an essential litmus test
of how that belief was from the start i think the idea of orthopraxy is again an opportunity for
us to be very humble not only from a personal standpoint but from a historical standpoint in
the church in the Presbyterian church of the American south there were Christians
that by the standards of their day could have been referred to as orthodox who owned and abused
slaves because they believed black people were inherently of less value and worth than white
people in the 1940s there were confessing quote unquote orthodox Christians who supported
Nazism and as we’ve looked back on those things historically we’ve said whoa
checking off the right boxes with i believe is not enough those beliefs have to be reinforced
by what we do and and if we can keep those together then i i think we are recapturing
reconnecting to the history of the faith to the um the kind of faith we see practiced and
professed by Jesus and we we start with the confession that historically all Christians
have struggled to connect belief and action and if we are fortunate enough to even even
if we are fortunate enough to stand on right belief it has not always produced in us
right discipleship and so this word orthodoxy has to be coupled to orthopraxy believing the
thing and doing the right thing and i think those in some ways are the two guiding
arrows the two guiding compass points for any church this is what we endeavor to do in any
congregation of the faith to believe the right things and to let believing the right things
lead us to doing the right things and so i think it’s very helpful to keep these words together
yeah and when we speak of both of these things the the source of all reformed understanding of
who god is starts with scripture i mean we we believe that you cannot get to the full
understanding without the revelation of god through the holy scriptures and you know what
we find when we think about orthopraxy biblically is you know we have a whole lot of injunctions
throughout the new testament especially the letters that follow the gospels as to
being temperate people in fact we’re told you know don’t be a stumbling block to anyone as
best as you can live humbly live righteously live honorably and there’s a sense in which
presbyterian’s conviction sometimes keeps us from being highly publicized in other words
some of the who we would turn to is some of the real exemplars of of the practice of the faith
as presbyterians they don’t stand on big stages they they they haven’t gone to big crusades they
don’t there’s not a lot of cameras and lights we as presbyterians very much celebrate those those
women and those men who have served faithfully they’ve often done that behind the scenes they’ve
often served in families you know grandparents taking care of grandkids or people going into
the soup kitchen and serving even you know when when they’re up to their hands in you know greece
like there’s this reality that presbyterians have reflected this reality that says we’re not about
celebrity and we’re not about marketing the church that’s not our our our job our job is to simply
live humbly to to try to be people of upright moral character to be people whose lives are
marked with grace and reflection right the point i’m trying to make is orthopraxia often
doesn’t look fancy it often doesn’t find its way onto the covers of books yet that is exactly what
we’re convicted we are called to be as people of faith that that is substantial and important
even if it’s not as tweet worthy as some other brand some other families of the christian faith
are a little more comfortable with when we couple orthodoxy and orthopraxia it’s really this
beautiful relationship and we need to honor both it it is not helpful to believe the right things
if we’re not doing the right things and on the other hand i may do the right thing but if i do
it for myself if it’s not done to the glory of christ then it’s not connected with right belief
and so keeping these things together is a challenging task for christians it’s ultimately
the task of the church as we seek to be faithful together and and we are cautious we’re we’re
cautious in all of that we we gently hold the our ability to declare what is right that is not
something that any of us has on our own we make those statements and we evaluate those judgments
based on the history of the church our understanding of scripture and the belief that god will continue
to unveil new truth to us as we seek to be faithful and as we learn new truth we learn new practice
we we implement that which we believe so that it has an effect in us and in the world and this is
how we understand ourselves to be witnesses so these may be new words to you today uh if so i
hope this is helpful i hope maybe there’s something in here that has given some new understanding
about a word that you may run across in some reading or occasionally in a creed or some kind
of christian material and and if so maybe this is uh a little bit of a primer on what some of
those ideas might mean yeah if i was going to summarize maybe the takeaway on orthodoxy is
orthodoxy is more of a mirror than it is a stick we don’t use orthodoxy against other people we
we don’t seek to weaponize the deepest truth of the gospel we seek to allow it to reflect to us
the places where we have room to grow i we submit to it and it therefore helps us along the path of
faith and discipleship we we find in it the truth and wisdom and the encouragement we need to live
more christ-like lives Presbyterians are not comfortable with the idea generally of wielding
these things as a weapon against the world or certainly against the culture because we’re not
surprised as i don’t think the bible is surprised when the world behaves like the world when the
world behaves as people who don’t believe and who don’t practice what we understand orthopraxy to be
we’re not shocked by that we recognize that ultimately these things are lenses for us to
evaluate our own faith and discipleship and to grow to be convicted to humbly repent and turn
to receive grace right so let’s recognize them for what they are that they’re deeply
uh mined and and uh explain and illuminated sort of understandings of the essentials of the faith
and we find in them the nurturing and the the help that we need as we grow and and that is
individual i frame that individually but that works its way into a church it’s communal in in
our shared practice and in it’s ultimately in our life together and in our holding ourselves to
these standards that we begin to discover the the deeper truths even as we question and wrestle
all and all that together yeah our core beliefs are the foundation on on which we stand
and the outpost from which we go into the world to practice those beliefs and so orthodoxy matters
it’s not we don’t often talk about it in that term but believing the truth of Jesus Christ and
discovering the truth of Jesus Christ is vitally important we could not be the church without it
literally we do not possess enough truth to be the church without um the beliefs that have been shown
to us and unveiled to us by the revelation of God and as we know them we seek to practice them and
to God be the glory and may God’s kingdom be built through those things on both ends yeah amen well
friends thanks for joining us hopefully this conversation has been helpful we do enjoy and
appreciate feedback so if you have a question or if this raises another you know strand that you’d
like to discuss with us of course leave a comment or send us an email you know we would love to
engage those conversations but our sincere hope is that this might not only illuminate this word
that we may not use that often but it might encourage you that it is this thing that we can
turn to to grow in our faith as we seek to be disciples of Jesus Christ thanks for spending
the time with us today we look forward to our conversation with you next week